Proving my dad wrong

Madison Taylor

Times-News

By Madison Taylor / Times-News

Published: Friday, October 11, 2013 at 07:26 PM.

Much as I hate to say it, my father was wrong, at least about this one thing.

My dad, who passed away in 2008, didn’t much care for the state of California. New York he could take or leave — unlike most southern men of his generation who find the Big Apple anything but sweet and delicious. California he had little to no use for under any circumstances. The Dodgers? He loathed them. Hollywood? Not a fan, except when it came to Dean Martin celebrity roasts or the “Carol Burnett Show.” He eschewed granola or other health food fads that usually swept in from the left coast, never got into rhythmic chanting and thought vegetarians highly suspect — until I up and married one. He didn’t even like “The Beverly Hillbillies” for goodness sakes.

In fact, he was fond of a particular quote about the Golden State. He often attributed it to the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. “The United States is tilted,” my dad would recite, “and everything loose slides to California.”

Actually, Frank Lloyd Wright never said that, although it seems like something he might have observed. No it was Mark Twain who uttered some slightly different version of it, probably after spending a portion of the 1860s in San Francisco. In fact, Twain went there at some point after deserting from the Confederacy in the Civil War. He worked for a newspaper in San Francisco during 1864 because he “couldn’t find honest employment.” Rather enjoyed that particular line, myself.

Anyway, I also discovered, via a few minutes of online research, that Twain never made the following statement widely attributed to him: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”

Snopes.com debunked this all to heck. Can’t be found in any written account of Twain or among Twain’s own prodigious scribbling. The online service that investigates myths, legends and flat-out lies usually involving politics, did admit, however, that it was a pretty good quip, worthy of America’s pre-imminent humorist and satirist.

Much as I hate to say it, my father was wrong, at least about this one thing.

My dad, who passed away in 2008, didn’t much care for the state of California. New York he could take or leave — unlike most southern men of his generation who find the Big Apple anything but sweet and delicious. California he had little to no use for under any circumstances. The Dodgers? He loathed them. Hollywood? Not a fan, except when it came to Dean Martin celebrity roasts or the “Carol Burnett Show.” He eschewed granola or other health food fads that usually swept in from the left coast, never got into rhythmic chanting and thought vegetarians highly suspect — until I up and married one. He didn’t even like “The Beverly Hillbillies” for goodness sakes.

In fact, he was fond of a particular quote about the Golden State. He often attributed it to the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. “The United States is tilted,” my dad would recite, “and everything loose slides to California.”

Actually, Frank Lloyd Wright never said that, although it seems like something he might have observed. No it was Mark Twain who uttered some slightly different version of it, probably after spending a portion of the 1860s in San Francisco. In fact, Twain went there at some point after deserting from the Confederacy in the Civil War. He worked for a newspaper in San Francisco during 1864 because he “couldn’t find honest employment.” Rather enjoyed that particular line, myself.

Anyway, I also discovered, via a few minutes of online research, that Twain never made the following statement widely attributed to him: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”

Snopes.com debunked this all to heck. Can’t be found in any written account of Twain or among Twain’s own prodigious scribbling. The online service that investigates myths, legends and flat-out lies usually involving politics, did admit, however, that it was a pretty good quip, worthy of America’s pre-imminent humorist and satirist.

Just didn’t happen.

It’s by happy coincidence that somehow the California quote about loose objects my father enjoyed so much was traced to Mark Twain and the time Twain spent in the City by the Bay. In September my spouse, the lovely and talented Roselee Papandrea Taylor, joined me for the long voyage west to northern California. It was my first trip to the state my dad loved to hate. My wife lived in Los Angeles for a short period after graduating from Syracuse, but hadn’t explored its northern regions. It was on our list.

Really, we have a list. It’s contained on a world map attached to a wall of our house. On it we mark destinations with color-coordinated pins. We note places we’ve been and places we want to see. Outside of her ancestral homeland of Italy, San Francisco was where we wanted to go most of all.

So we did.

And I’m here to say, my father was wrong.

Way wrong.

We found northern California to be … well, fabulous. It’s not a description I toss around loosely.

Our itinerary was ambitious. After all, who knows when we might get back. We wanted to see the San Francisco Bay, Fisherman’s Wharf, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, Twin Peaks, the hippie district at Haight-Ashbury, Chinatown and Little Italy. We planned to view redwood trees in Muir Woods, sample Sausalito and walk wine country in Sonoma. We also wanted to see how people actually live in that part of the world, just in case, well, you know.

We got around to most, if not all of it, including that part about seeing how people there live. Instead of a pricey hotel, we rented an apartment for the week via a website called airbnb.com. It landed us in a cozy, affordable garden cottage in Burlingame, Calif., 10 minutes from the airport, less than 30 by train from San Francisco. It was quaint as all get out with landscaping that appeared to be taken directly from an old Napa Style catalogue. Burlingame, by the way, is home to the Pez Museum, which we happened to see at breakfast one morning. We returned later for a guided tour by the pleasant proprietor who apparently made his hobby a business.

I love finding unexpected stuff around the next corner and checking it out.

All in all it was a great trip, living up to all of our expectations and then some. The weather was perfect — sunny and 70 in the daytime, light jacket weather at night. The scenery sublime. The mountains create a majestic backdrop to the blue bay water in San Francisco where sailboats seem almost painted in and birds are in charge — and are fully aware of it.

While we were there I thought more than once about my dad and his rather dim view of California.

I wish he could’ve seen it with us.

Madison Taylor is editor of the Times-News. Contact him by email at mtaylor@thetimesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @tnmadisontaylor.